We’ve made some changes here at marlenadelacroix.com in an effort to upgrade our service to you, our Thinking Fans. We’ve added a search box, all the better to help you locate what we’re had to say in the past about your favorite soaps and their characters, casts and storylines. And we’re added list of links to our fellow soap opera sites and others we think may interest you, a list that is likely to grow. There’s more to come, as this site continues to evolve. As you know, darlings, Marlena has been and always will be all about you, the soap fans and faithful readers loves ever do dearly. It makes my day to get your comments to this column. We’re here to serve you, always!

Isn’t Zeman being her usual timeless self in the Luke/Fluke story? Thirty-nine years in soaps! She was a sensation in her soap premiere role Lana McClain on One Life to Live in 1976, and, after all these sensational years, she’s a soap icon today.

2. Speaking of, how much do we all miss OLTL and my fave soap of all time, All My Children? Viva forever Agnes Nixon, their creator and the greatest writer of all time, along with her mentor Irna Phillips, the mother of daytime soap opera. Miss my Agnes, who is 88 now. She is a mother to us all! Those soaps we miss so sorely were her children, you know! In addition to her four real children and numerous grandchildren.

3. Two four six eight, who do we appreciate? Two time Emmy winner Maura West (Ava Jerome, GH; ex Carly Manning, As the World Turns)! She deserves this year’s and next year’s Emmys for her work as Ava. I like her better than her Carly, and Carly was immortal. Of course Ava, who was given a terminal cancer prognosis by Dr. Silas Clay (Michael Easton) is going to live.

4. Didn’t the ever handsome (those dimples!) and sublimely talented Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos GH, also a Emmy winner) look like an impressionist painter with the beard? So glad he shaved it this week!

5. Who isn’t sick of GH’s amnesiac Jake Doe/Jason Quartermaine? I certainly am! He’s on every day, and stays, and stays, and stays. Even the superb Emmy winner Billy Miller (ex-Billy Abbot, The Young and the Restless) who plays him can’t keep this interesting. At this point, I just don’t care whether or not he is with Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst)!